PHANTOM THREAD: Paul Tomas Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Fifties London

What a fucking masterpiece this film is

Yeah btw it’s a great looking movie

enthralled and enraptured by this

fave scene was the surprise party argument, his pleasure in his cruelty and her being fit for him in it making him regressively more childish

he really has to play yeats tho, ill say it again

Yeah, that's the scene I think of most.

i get the love for manville but for me its utterly almas film, what a great character, what a turn.

movie it brought to mind, aside from those mentioned upthread- perfume

I watched this again the other day too (that it's just been added to Netflix is maybe the reason we are discussing it. I still love it but still find that the denouement kinda comes out of nowhere.

I assumed that Vicky Krieg would become a massive star after this and I'm surprised it never happened.

his submissions to her throughout the story signal the ending fairly enough imo

once he let her drive it was all over

I think it's just me then.

xxp I was just thinking about her the other day.

Krieps hasn't made a similarly 'big' movie, whether that's her choices or not... soon to be seen as Marvin Gaye's girlfriend in a biopic, directed by Julien Temple.

lmao @ all the "this looks boring" posts upthread

really perfect film, i started to think it was more linear than inherent vice or the master and then there was the scene where he saw his mother in the corner of the room.

the shots of him starting to make a dress for alma on their date, the intoxicating shots of the pinning of fabric, juxtaposed with the weird sudden juddering impositions of control when he starts measuring her... there's so much below surface tension in this movie, which is staggering when thought of next to pta's early films, which are pretty much all surface tension

Variously put me in mind of The Archers

i am a complete film idiot but i'm glad i shared this association with morbs

inherent vice > phantom thread > there will be blood = magnolia = the master > punch-drunk love > boogie nights

idk, that was really frustrating to put together. pta's fuckin great. can't believe my favorite director in high school is having such a rich mature period

I love movies about work.

Alfred I got this new book but haven’t started it yet, looks good though https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-process-genre

Sorry, I've made this point a million times, but whenever I see talk of PTA's or Spielberg's or Scorsese's rich mature period, to me it's like Sarris propping up Seven Women or The Countess of Hong Kong along similar lines in The American Cinema. Loving these late films is fine, I just take issue with the implication that Boogie Nights or Jaws or Mean Streets are, I guess, less rich and immature films. They're the Sex Pistols. I'm glad the Sex Pistols never hung around for their rich mature period. (Ignore reunions and other projects.)

i mean i've got magnolia way up in the rankings so it's not like i'm dissing his earlier work. they're still of markedly different calibers though, and it makes him a more interesting artist to have both periods

pta's division down the center of his filmography is also a way clearer narrative than trying to define a rich mature period for either spielberg or scorsese, for me at least. and even then that's simplifying things too much, phantom thread is totally in conversation with punch-drunk love

I like the "in conversation" idea.

Don't mind me, I'm just a stubborn defender of those guys' earlier films.

Adam Sandler is The Hungry Boy

inherent vice > phantom thread > there will be blood = magnolia = the master > punch-drunk love > boogie nights

No Hard Eight?

i haven't seen it yet!

oh man -- can't wait

Magnolia is my least fave by now, I agree w/ PTA that it should be cut way down.

it was my favorite movie of all time when i was in high school/college and i rewatched it last week and its effect has not diminished, i have no objectivity about it. it is just this cascade of scenes and dialogue and performances i love building up to catharsis. though this time i noticed how the deletion of the worm plotline essentially makes some characters fully disappear from the plot (stanley)

(deleting an entire plotline is still one of the smartest choices pta made with that film)

I saw Magnolia last year for the first time and while it didn’t land the way it would’ve if I were in high school there’s some stuff in it that really landed for me. Much of it to do with Tom Cruise’s hollow-eyed performance.

Still his best movie.

Well yeah. Also a much better version of The Power of the Dog imo.

I've never watched a film in which a director's absolute mystery of visual and sound design and cinematography had me vacillating in sympathy from one character to the other.

lol mastery

It’s interesting to me that altho I have adored PTA’s work since Boogie Nights, nearly all his films have felt incomplete to me. BN and Phantom Thread probably the most complete. But there’s always something unresolved or not quite tucked in. Don’t know if it’s a flaw or a signature.

something unresolved or not quite tucked in

I think he senses it too, which is why his endings can seem like he's wrenching to put all his meanings in order.

he removed an entire story thread from magnolia, he’s def got the impulse

i don’t agree with the sentiment about his endings tho. did the ending of the master give you the feeling he was trying to put all his meanings in order? far from it imo

https://media.giphy.com/media/26DN5ayYLdN6bK62I/giphy.gif

Yes, I think The Master is his most successful film with, no coincidence, his most successful ending.

haha fair! but i love the way inherent vice and phantom thread end too, and neither of them feel like a late massing of the film's themes

I'm shocked a picture as dialectically subtle sprung from the mind of an American writer-director.

John Simon is cheering that post; I am not.

what -- mine?

Simon wouldn't write a thing without a passing gibe at a person's looks, using strained alliteration, or lamenting how even good American movies fall short of a European tradition he's got lodged in his head, which means he's like me.

as an aside my ranking upthread is not correct but i had only seen the master once at the time

Yes; subtlety in American films is hardly rare (maybe dialectically subtle is a distinction I'm missing). Funny you say "from the mind of," though, because Phantom Thread to me very much belongs to the From the Mind Of genre, where you get some portentous voice announcing "From the mind of _________" (Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, etc.--David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick in a previous lifetime) in the trailer.

I mean, it's also a movie about closeups of Welsh rarebit, martinis with a twist, and mushrooms in butter.

now that I think about it Boogie Nights ended with something not quite tucked in

Inherent Vice works because it's somewhat built in that putting everything neatly away by the time it ends was not ever really on the table